One Thing Leads to Another
by Eclipsia
Summary: After having a bit of difficulty in finding a way home, Sarah finds herself 'stuck at Horseland' for the night. Surely this won't lead to something that will be regretted in the near future.


Well, I'm a bit new to the Horseland Fanfiction Archive scene. And what better way to introduce myself to the fandom than by being contary and posting a story that isn't about romance at all? :'D I'll say apologies ahead of time for the sloppy structure, abused English language, and whatever else may plague this incoherent piece of shoddy literature. I also appologize for the lack of Sarah/Will. I love the couple, but Sarah/Bailey strike me as a more dynamic pairing, be it platonic or romantic. Either way, the nature of their relationship (and pretty much everyone else's) is left to interpretation.

So I hope you enjoy! Reviews and/or constructive criticism will be astronomically appreciated. :3

Disclaimer: I do not own Horseland nor the characters shown. Thanks.

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><p>Keeping true to typical pen pal relationships, Alma and Alexander's main form of contact was through handwritten letter. Both of them enjoyed the traditional aspects of this, and somewhere along the way they managed to form a silent pact to never contact each other through email. They kept true to this, but now and then (every week at six o'clock Saturday evening) they ended up finding each other on the computer at the exact same time.<p>

One thing led to another and soon enough Instant Messaging became a favorite pastime.

Alma had some doubts at first, but with some help from her strictly-platonic pen pal and Molly's surprising computer intellect, she eventually decided to give this IM thing a try.

Alma's lack of comprehension for electronic devices only crashed the hard drive once.

Most of the time Alma and Alexander talked/typed about books (what they read in various books, what their opinions were on various books, what one book in particular smelled like, etc.), and when they weren't chatting about books they were chatting about horses. (Some days they got carried away and talked about both horses andbooks.)

And, during the rare occasion when they weren't talking about either of these things, they shed some light on other interests they happened to have. Aside from horses and books and books about horses, the two had some differences in their choice of hobbies.

Alma revealed once that she enjoyed writing stories of her own, stories that may or may not be of the romantic variety. At first Alexander wasn't terribly captivated with this knowledge, but it wasn't too long before curiosity began to fester and he started wanting to read these 'stories'. Of course, she ended up chickening out and absolutely refused to share her creative writings. He could only hope that one day Alma would get over her silly (and yet slightly understandable) embarrassment so that he could see these ever-allusive stories.

* * *

><p>She had forgotten her phone.<p>

Sarah grunted with frustration at this, doing one last check inside her bag to be sure that the red cellular device wasn't back at home charging on her nightstand. Unfortunately, it most of likely was, as it was very much so lacking in the bag.

_Oh, well. It's not like this is a problem or anything_. She told herself over and over again. Sarah wasn't the type of girl to get emotionally attached to her cell phone, but when all of her contacts were out of reach and the only phone numbers she had memorized were her own, the loss naturally became a bit devastating.

So… catching a ride from one of her friends wasn't an option.

Earlier that morning, her mother—the only parent home at the time because Dad was attending a business trip in New York—had reminded Sarah for the twentieth time that she couldn't pick her up from her riding lessons. Sarah had convinced her mother that, yes, she would be able to find a ride back.

The hours of the day began to dwindle, however, and amidst the riding lessons and horse care and trail riding and other such things, Sarah never actually got around to asking Alma for a ride back to the city with her father. The closing time for Horseland eventually came and went. Sarah had stepped inside for a quick errand and by the time she had come out, Alma (and any other available friends) had already left for home.

It wasn't necessarily that she was now stuck at Horseland, for as far as she was concerned, being 'stuck at Horseland' was physically impossible. It was simply too wonderful of a place. She really didn't mind the horse smells that caused normal people to wrinkle their noses and run in the other direction. Being in the company of the horses, especially now in the evening when there was no activity to excite them, was honestly one of the things that she enjoyed more than anything.

It was as such at this moment, with horses nickering quietly to each other and with Sarah sitting in the hayloft browsing through her bag and discovering a lack of communication devices. The sky was a nice shade of pink as the sun slowly began to dip behind the horizon. Insects started buzzing quietly outside the barn and a cool breeze swept in through the open barn doors. The air had chilled considerably, and despite the mild irritation of being 'stranded', she was enjoying herself a lot.

"I guess I can just walk home." Sarah mused quietly to herself, zipping the purse shut and cupping her chin in her hands. She regretted thinking of the idea, though; it was getting mildly dark and the thought of walking all the way back to the suburbs kind of scared her.

Will was off somewhere attending to chores and the rest of the Handler family was inside the house. As the minutes started ticking by, she found she was… starting to get a bit lonely, actually. Conveniently, however, like as if he was aware of her current state of bored contemplation, Bailey strolled into the barn, humming to himself in a hilariously off-key sort of way.

He didn't know she was still there, so Sarah considered jumping out and scaring him, but after a moment of thinking she decided the best thing would be to let her presence known from the start.

"Hey, Bailey!" she chirped, startling him nonetheless. She was sitting at the top of the ladder leading to the hayloft so it didn't take long for him to recover from the surprise and find her location. His face brightened instantly when he saw his assailant. "Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find that _you're _still here, Sarah. What are you doing, anyway? Trying to catch fleas?"

"I'm kind of stuck here for now." She said sheepishly. "My mom's out on business and there's no one around to give me a ride home."

He scratched the back of his head and mulled this over for a moment, before looking over and shrugging a bit. "Can't you just walk? You could probably use to exercise anyway."

"I'd… rather not go out alone in the dark. It makes me a little nervous." Obviously.

"I could walk you home, if you want."

To be honest, she thought that was a great idea, but he suggested this while waggling his eyebrows and acting like as if he was such a lady's man. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

"No thanks."

Besides, Bailey wasn't exactly the most threatening presence. Both of them walking around in the dark would probably only be minutely safer than Sarah walking by herself.

Sarah didn't tell him this, though. "So why are you out in the barn at this hour?" She asked instead.

He revealed the reason was his mother had started making dinner and he wanted to escape helping with its preparations. Sarah didn't comment and simply rolled her eyes, because this was a typical Bailey thing to do. She eventually climbed down from the loft so that they could go around and be sure that each horse had a clean bucket of water and a pat on the nose. Bailey nearly lost a finger when he absentmindedly stroked Pepper's muzzle, though.

(Whoops.)

Eventually they got tired of that and sat together on a bench, mulling over what to do with themselves. The temperature had dropped even more so, but the pleasantness of the evening still remained. There were a few horses in the paddock chewing on grass, standing peacefully in the dimming light. Sarah sighed dreamily a bit and contented herself to watching them. She would have to find another way to go home soon, she knew.

That is, until Bailey suddenly made a suspicious 'hmm' noise and started grinning excitedly. "You know, there was this really cool thing I found in the tack room earlier today." He said, looking up and nudging her slightly with his elbow. "I remember putting it down because I wanted to show you, but I ended up forgetting about it. Want to go check it out? I bet it's still there."

"Sure! But is it that frog thing you found? Because I think you already showed it to me."

"Nah, it's something different. Come on!"

Sarah was skeptical about how legitimately 'cool' this thing was, but by now she was willing to do anything so as to avoid going home, so she readily got up and followed him. Much to Bailey's chagrin, however, the thing he found had disappeared from where he last left it.

The search then began, a thorough exploration through the deepest, mustiest parts of the tack room. There was a great deal of moving and shaking and dust and leathery smells, and Bailey nearly knocked over a giant bag of oats onto Sarah's head. To be fair, though, she was the one who accidentally launched the spider onto his arm. Anyway, it was all very entertaining, but eventually both of them lost interest in searching and stood in the center of the room puzzling over where the thing had gone.

It was then that Bailey remembered something.

"Oh, wait. Yeah, it was that frog thing."

(Double whoops.)

Their search wasn't completely in vain, however. They continued poking around the room and discovered something most interesting: there was an old journal wedged tightly between the wall and the supplies bin.

Curiosity perked, both of them took a turn at attempting to grab the book by sticking their hand in the crack, but either the hand was too large or the book was just out of reach. Sarah instructed Bailey to pull the bin backwards so as to make the space a little less tight, but Bailey wasn't exactly the strongest manly man around and this attempt was met with failure too.

Sarah sat on the floor and pondered over what to do next when Bailey suddenly snapped his fingers with realization and grabbed something off of the wall. It was a strange piece of metal, probably used for repairing saddles or something, and Sarah had always wondered what it was supposed to do. Tonight, though, its use was for retrieving historical artifacts from where they have been wedged.

Bailey smiled determinedly and expertly maneuvered the piece of metal behind the bin to get a hold of the book. His partner in crime grabbed hold of the bin and tried pulling the thing backwards as well. Unfortunately for Bailey's pride, Sarah actually had better results doing this.

After a bit of so-close-but-not-close-enough attempts, the book suddenly was released of its hold and landed with a soft 'thunk' on the floor. The two stood there with surprise for a moment before dropping what they were doing and high-fiving ceremoniously.

Awesome!

Bailey placed the metallic item back on the shelf and watched her bend down to pick it up. "Wouldn't it be cool if it was decades old or something?" He beamed, being overdramatic and relishing in it. "This would be the first time it's been unearthed in over hundreds of years! We'll be famous!"

Sarah smiled at what he was saying while turning the journal over carefully, observing the large streaks of dirt it left in her hands. Bailey was right about one thing: who knows how long it had been back there? It certainly had gathered a lot of dust, but somehow she doubted it was as old as Bailey proclaimed.

The two of them exchanged glances before hurrying out of the room to seat themselves back on the bench. Sarah was glad to be out of the musty tack room, even if it was harder to read in the darkness. The light emanating from the barn provided enough illumination anyway.

Upon closer observation, they found the journal hadn't survived the extraction process as well as they had hoped, but it was still in fairly good condition for a book that was stuck in a crack for a period of years. The front had a pretty generic design, but was still interesting in the sense that it was literally coated with a thick layer of woolen dust.

Bailey went to blow the dust away dramatically like they do in the movies, but Sarah pulled the book away from him just in time, saving both of them from a month's worth of allergies.

The spine cracked a bit as she cautiously opened it.

It was hard to see at first, but there was a name scribbled on the front page. The ink was very smeared and faded though, what with the wrinkled pages and water stains.

Sarah struggled to read it. "Dena Padreq…?" she trailed off.

Well, that was confusing.

"I think it says 'Alma Rodriquez'." Bailey pointed out, almost disappointed in Sarah's poor translation of the handwriting. (He was also disappointed that this meant the journal wasn't insanely old.)

A bit of research produced the fact that this had been written by Alma about three years prior, back before Sarah even attended Horseland. The two got excited all over again, because Alma probably didn't even realize this book still existed. How thrilling! It became even more obvious that this was Alma's as they ventured further through the pages. (Sarah expressed reluctance at reading the journal only briefly.) When writing, Alma tended to use obscure vocabulary and write with a scrawl that could only be described as 'inherited from her father'.

Sarah read aloud better than Bailey did, so when it came time to reading the contents of this book she was the one who provided most of the narration.

Admittedly, Bailey and Sarah hoped to find shocking confessions of secret love. It was shallow, but what else was one to hope for when snooping through an old diary? To their surprise, however, the pages were filled mostly with ramblings about books and observations about horses.

"How unsurprising." Bailey said, crossing his arms and slumping over a bit. "There's just a bunch of useless horse facts in here."

She agreed, but secretly felt ashamed for filling her own journal with such things.

"Skip to the end," he continued. "Let's see if there's anything interesting there."

The command was obeyed, and after flipping to a few pages before the ending, Sarah resumed her reading. She stopped after the first few sentences, though. What was this…?

"_Dead and dry leaves crunched under her feet as she ran through the bushes and around the trees. She knew she could never escape… But she could hear them. The whispering. __And then suddenly, she was out in a clearing. For a momentary instant she thought she was out of the forest and near the town. But no, it was only a small clearing in the woods. There were still trees all around, and in the center of the clearing was an old building._"

Sarah stopped reading aloud. The two of them then stared at the writing for quite some time, before Bailey decided to express what they were both thinking. "What the _heck_ was that?"

She chose to not reprimand him for saying 'heck' and simply scratched her ear with interest and confusion. "… I have no clue. It looks like she was writing a story or something."

He leaned in to peer over her shoulder and scanned over the writing some more. Suddenly they both knew they had to find the beginning, and Sarah flipped over quite a large amount of pages before finally arriving at the opening of the story.

The title was apparently "The Forgotten Kiss", which had absolutely nothing to do with the dramatic chase scene they had read earlier. Apparently this was a romance.

Sarah began feeling uncomfortable again and instantly felt bad for paging through Alma's secret (albeit old) journal. What if Alma found out? Would she be angry? The possibility that Alma wouldn't care also crossed her mind, but this was drowned out by the other paranoid thoughts that ran circles in her head.

"Do you think we should be reading this?" Sarah asked tentatively, closing the book but keeping her hand inside to mark their position. "I mean, this is Alma's _journal_. The writing about books and horses is one thing, but what if she really wouldn't want us to know about her story?"

"Sarah, she honestly won't care." He shrugged nonchalantly, looking a bit irritated that she had the audacity to care about such a thing. "I know _I _wouldn't care about something I wrote over three years ago. She probably wouldn't even remember this if we showed it to her."

"Do you think we should?"

"Should what?"

"Show it to her, I mean."

He was about to respond, but before another word or thought was created, the sound of brisk _clak-clakking _started echoing down the aisle. They didn't need to look for the source to know who it was, and immediately they stashed the book on the bench and jumped onto their feet at attention.

She was a terrifying presence, speaking and acting with firm grace and dignity. And while Bailey's father (coincidentally, as far as Sarah was concerned) happened to be away on business, she was in command of the stable. How Eva Marie Handler, who detested filth like it was an insult and Bailey's laziness like it was sin, dealt with surviving at Horseland was beyond every single one of the students. Her presence wasn't something to doubt, however, but something to come to respect and appreciate.

She also always wore high-heels. How she managed this was another thing that eluded the kids.

"Aha. I thought I'd find you out here." She spoke, not sounding angry but still obviously tired and not in a good mood. Unlike Bailey, she was actually surprised to see that Sarah was still around, but it only took looking the young girl over to assess the situation and acknowledge the problem. Somehow. Not another word was said before she planted her hands on her hips and began issuing orders, telling Bailey to help his cousin with bringing in the horses and politely requesting that Sarah use the phone in the office to call someone to pick her up, because for_ Heaven's sake_, no young lady was to be sleeping out in the barn among the animals just because there was no one to escort her home.

The youngsters scurried off to do as they were told.

Bailey's mother started to _clak-clak _out of the barn (and retreat from the smell) when she spotted something on the bench. It was a book with a generic covering that had been through some pretty damaging situations. She picked it up and offhandedly paged through it, assuming from the handwriting that this was a book written by Alma's father. He told her not too long ago that over the years he had written down various horse-care facts in a book, a book which mysteriously vanished from his possession a few weeks ago. Surely he'd be glad to have it returned.

Alma's journal was pocketed away with the intention of being handed over to Mr. Rodriguez.

Triple whoops.

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><p>To Sarah's dismay, the sky had predictably grown darker over the course of time, and she was now more nervous about traveling home than she was earlier. She didn't mention this to Mrs. Handler, but there was no way for her to call anyone from the office phone, due to her not remembering any of her friends' phone numbers. The situation had gone from amusing to frustrating, so she willingly jogged out of the barn to find the boys in order to assist them. On the way out of the stable she noticed that the bench was empty and the book had disappeared. The surprise she felt was probably akin to the surprise that Alma had felt when it first went missing.<p>

"Well, Bailey, I guess the secrets within the book shall remain forever a mystery." She said dramatically, clambering over the fence to join him and Will in the paddock. At his confused face expression, she told him unceremoniously that the book had disappeared.

He slapped a hand over his face with dismay. "Oh, no. My mom probably took it when we left. Go figure."

Will didn't say anything because he had no idea what they were talking about, instead turning around and granting Sarah a longe line so that she could help. He already had one of the horses hooked up and was leading the big guy towards the fence door. "Hey, Bailey here told me you've been having some trouble finding a way home."

"Uh, yeah. It's become quite a situation." She was smiling calmly, but was holding onto the longe line like as if it was the only thing keeping her alive.

Will flashed her a quick smile and started leading the horse towards the paddock gate. "If you can wait a minute I'll grab the keys and give you a ride back to the city in Uncle John's old pick-up." He offered, turning his back just in time to miss the huge grin that split her face in half.

"Sure, sounds great! I mean, if it's not a problem or anything." For some inexplicable reason, being escorted home by Will was so much more appealing than being escorted by Bailey, no matter how run-down that dangerous old pick-up truck was. She was the only one who thought it was dangerous, anyway.

Bailey then made a motion that suggested he was going to catch her should she faint, earning him a glare and punch on the arm.

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><p>Alma's father was very glad to have the book 'returned' to him, and he too paged through it and glimpsed the handwriting and horse knowledge. Surely this was a bit of good luck! Now he could come through with his promise and mail it over to that friend he had promise to give it to.<p>

He had come into contact with Alexander's folks over the course of Alma's pen pal relationship, and he had agreed to send them his horse-care notes after they had mentioned that their son wanted to learn more about horses.

The next day, Mr. Rodriquez drove down to the local post office and sent off the book. After a few days the item was retrieved by the Buglicks and handed over to Alexander. The boy was happy to have a new book to look through, but didn't get around to reading the book until a week or so later. Once he had started browsing through the pages, however, it eventually became apparent that this was not a book written by Alma's father.

The book references sprinkled throughout tipped him off, but the realization became most noticeable when he reached a section called "The Forgotten Kiss", written by a name that sounded very familiar.

The next Instant Messaging session he and Alma had involved much confusion and hilarity, though the confusion was mainly on Alma's part. How in the world could a book that she wrote over three years ago find its way across the state to Alexander's house just after he had expressed interest in reading her writings?

It was an awful coincidence.

Sarah and Bailey never actually found out what happened to the book, as neither they nor Alma mentioned anything about it.

Anyway, as far as they were concerned, the book's disappearance was probably for the better.

After all, wouldn't want Alma to get embarrassed!


End file.
